Chippewa Valley Times

Undergraduate and community college students will be presenting their research at the upcoming CERCA events at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire and the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire – Barron County. This event will host 264 poster presentations and 123 oral presentations, backed by the guidance of 178 faculty mentors from UW-Eau Claire.

In addition to the university participants, 31 students from Chippewa Valley Technical College will also showcase their work. According to Dr. Erica Benson, the executive director of UW-Eau Claire's Office of Research and Sponsored Programs, CERCA is a platform for students to display both their research efforts and their presentation skills. Benson mentioned that these students have also presented at various prestigious conferences and contributed to various scholarly outlets.

“The projects being presented are at various stages of development and many are cutting-edge projects advancing knowledge and creative inquiry in their respective disciplines,” Benson says. “I am so impressed by the caliber of the scholarly projects our undergraduate students are engaging in and by their ability to communicate their work to experts and non-experts alike.”

Hayden Kinstler, a third-year materials science and engineering major, is one of the students set to present. His project focuses on REBCO superconducting tape, aiming to discover optimal cost-reduction practices by comparing samples from different manufacturers.

Kinstler emphasizes the importance of CERCA in providing a familiar and supportive environment for practice. He points out that the skills honed through this event were instrumental when he later presented at the Applied Superconductivity Conference. Reflecting on his research journey, Kinstler notes, “Research at UW-Eau Claire has truly opened many doors.”

His research experiences at the university lead to opportunities such as his upcoming work at the National High Field Magnetic Laboratory in Florida this summer. “This summer I'll be working in Florida at the National High Field Magnetic Laboratory — an opportunity that wouldn't have been possible without investment from my professors and different UWEC programs in supporting my research endeavors," Kinstler says.